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One of the summer's most anticipated tours is the House of Blues' Smokin' Grooves Tour, which features cutting-edge R. and B. artists such as the Fugees and A Tribe Called Quest, and will kick off next week in Sacramento, California. Less anticipated by most audiences is Lollapalooza-founder Perry Farrell's new ENIT festival, beginning Aug. 9 in Cleveland. ENIT--named, says Farrell, for a festival of harmony and enlightenment found in a science-fiction novel called Cancer Planet Mission--will feature Farrell's band Porno for Pyros as well as some acts that aren't exactly in heavy rotation on MTV, such as the Orb and Meat Beat Manifesto. ENIT will start each of its shows with a tree-planting ceremony and will also include a communal meal and a beer-and-wine happy hour.
Farrell doesn't expect to make money and doesn't care. "Why did I leave Lollapalooza?" he muses. "They are a business now. I can't expect them to go in this year and ask them to lose a bunch of money. Myself, I'm up for it. I'm young, I don't have high overhead, I have the time, it turns me on."
He may have company in the red. With so many tours on the road this summer--and the fact that, increasingly, radio stations are sponsoring their own minifestivals--every new tour will face a challenge to find an audience. Indeed, some festivals have been suffering from slow sales in some markets. (In Lollapalooza's case, it could be a Metallica backlash among the festival's traditional alternative-rock fans.) Still, House of Blues vice president Kevin Morrow figures it's worth losing money this summer for HOB to "get the brand name out there" and establish Smokin' Grooves as a future franchise. After all, this summer's oddly titled money loser may be next summer's well-known moneymaking Lollapalooza.
--With reporting by Patrick E. Cole and Jeffrey Ressner/ Los Angeles and David E. Thigpen/New York